Joystiq

Epic's Mark Rein and CliffyB explain PC gaming 'disarray'

Griffin McElroy — 2008-03-02T18:00:00+00:00

Filed under: PC

Gears of War creator and faux-chainsaw-gun wielder Cliff Blezinski made some pretty disparaging (if not slightly true) comments about the state of PC gaming to MTV Multiplayer's Stephen Totilo at last month's DICE summit in Las Vegas -- leading to to his illustrated immolation on a webcomic a few of you have probably heard of. At GDC, StevieT got another chance to sit down with CliffyB, this time with fellow Epic bigwig Mark Rein (MarkyR?) to flesh out the problems plaguing the PC gaming industry.

The two never backtrack on CliffyB's original statement, but they do express their fervent support for the PC Gaming Alliance -- a sentiment which will hopefully cause anti-console gamers to dismantle any ballistic weaponry they may have pointed at Cliffy's residence. We do so want a Gears of War 3.

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Watch this space, Epic Games plans to double in size

Jason Dobson — 2008-01-14T11:30:00+00:00

Filed under: PC, Business

Having tired of rubbing actual elbows with fellow teammates, Epic Games' always verbose VP Mark Rein has confessed that he and his squad of developers have "pretty much run out of space" in the company's North Carolina base of operations, and that plans are well underway for an expansion to "at least" double the facility's current size. According to a report by North Carolina's News Observer, the devs coughed up a cool $1.57 million for the new office space, which will be positioned on a five-acre lot adjacent to Epic's current 31,000-square foot HQ.

Headcount at Epic currently stands at 94, with current growth of around one new employee a month expected to continue for the next couple of years. So with all of this added space, will the developers get to spread out, and maybe quit knocking over each others' Mt. Dew as they reach for their mouse? Unlikely, as the report notes that the new facility will instead be largely used to house the numerous play testers that visit Epic, rather than have to rent out space down the street. We understand the need completely, though until the devs get additional space of their own we'd suggest judicious application of lids.

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Unreal Tournament 3 on PS3 has gone gold, likely due mid-December

Justin McElroy — 2007-11-21T16:01:00+00:00

Filed under: Sony PlayStation 3, First Person Shooters

PS3 owners can put their fears to rest: It looks likes you are going to get your hands on Unreal Tournament 3 before year's end. Epic's Mark Rein has just posted on the company's official forums: "We got news last night that Unreal Tournament 3 has been approved by SCEA and has been released to North American manufacturing."

Now, the big question is when you or Santa (wink!) will be able to get your hot/gloved hands on it. Rein says Midway will have a formal announcement early next week, but he guessed they "will start shipping the title to North American retailers on Monday December 10th and it could show up in stores as early as December 11th, but more likely toward the middle of that week."

Rein still isn't sure about PAL territories because of some localization issues. His best guess is that the the game will ship there in January or February.

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Rein: Work on 360's Unreal Tournament III just on hold

Justin McElroy — 2007-11-16T09:32:00+00:00

Filed under: PC, Sony PlayStation 3, Microsoft Xbox 360, First Person Shooters

We had a spot of confusion yesterday when Epic's Mark Rein was quoted in one piece as saying work hadn't started on the Unreal Tournament III 360 version. Meanwhile, another site was reporting that they'd already played it on 360. Now, Rein has explained to us that it's not that work on the 360 version hasn't started yet, it's just that it's on hold.

"What I probably should have said was 'start working on it again.' We had the game up and running on all three platforms up until last spring. In fact Official Xbox Magazine came out and played the game for a great cover story they did on it. We stopped working on the 360 version so we could concentrate our efforts on shipping the various PC and PS3 versions. Once we get those out of the way, and take some time to enjoy the holidays with our friends and families, we'll start working on the 360 version again. There's still a decent bit of work to do. For example we have simple LAN play but no Xbox Live implementation yet and we need to work with Microsoft to figure out how to accommodate mods on their platform."

So take heart, 360 owners. While it may still be a while until you get your hands on the game, the wait won't be quite as excruciating as you thought.

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Rein: No work [for now] on 360's Unreal Tournament III, Us: Oh, OK [Updated]

Justin McElroy — 2007-11-15T17:30:00+00:00

Filed under: Sony PlayStation 3, Microsoft Xbox 360, First Person Shooters

You think it's easy sitting around all day blogging about video games? Not so, sir. Take today for example. First we see this interview with Mark Rein, wherein he says that work on Unreal Tournament III's 360 version won't even begin until next year. "Wow, that's interesting," we think, and we start dashing out a post for you to enjoy.

But then we get a tip from a reader leading us to Australian site Gameplayer, which previewed the game. Specifically, he told us to check out Page 3, wherein the site says it previewed the game ... on the 360. "So what should I do?" you wonder. Well, the answer is obvious: Email Mark Rein for clarification, of course. But shouldn't you have a post up about it while you wait to hear back so no one is in the dark? Yes, of course you should. So, there you have it.

[Via X3F]

[Update: We just got the following note from Mark Rein: "What I probably should have said was 'start working on it again'. We had the game up and running on all three platforms up until last spring. In fact Official Xbox Magazine came out and played the game for a great cover story they did on it. We stopped working on the 360 version so we could concentrate our efforts on shipping the various PC and PS3 versions. Once we get those out of the way, and take some time to enjoy the holidays with our friends and families, we'll start working on the 360 version again. There's still a decent bit of work to do. For example we have simple LAN play but no Xbox Live implementation yet and we need to work with Microsoft to figure out how to accommodate mods on their platform."]

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No PS3-to-PC play in Unreal Tournament 3

Justin McElroy — 2007-09-26T11:25:00+00:00

Filed under: PC, Sony PlayStation 3, First Person Shooters

PS3 players hoping to test their Unreal Tournament 3 skills against PC players (read: get their clocks cleaned) will be out of luck according to Epic's Mark Rein. In an IRC chat yesterday, Rein wrote, "The biggest challenge in doing cross platform play is syncronizing [sic] the builds such that the build on the PC is 100% compatible with the build on the PS3."

The good news is that the PC-PS3 divide may not be a permanent one. Rein said that the feature is one that could be considered after the game is released. But, unfortunately, he says that even at that point "the likelihood is small." Though it's a cool feature, we still want to know ... is it something you guys care about?

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Microsoft opening up to user content

Ross Miller — 2007-08-15T22:31:00+00:00

Filed under: Microsoft Xbox 360, Online, Business

Though traditionally a controlling mother when it comes to its infant Xbox Live online service, Microsoft hinted today at easing up its sweaty-palmed handholding. Speaking at Gamefest 2007 (via 1UP), the company discussed the Xbox Live Server Platform (XLSP) that companies can use to deliver content, provided they take full responsibility for monitoring the content.

When suggested that one might use this to create a PC level editor that would make games for an Xbox 360 title, Microsoft Software Design Engineer Zsolt Mathe said, "Even though nobody has done that, I would highly recommend that."

Epic Games Vice President Mark Rein had previously stated that Xbox Live's resistance to user-created maps and mods was responsible in part to the delay of the Unreal Tournament 3 for Xbox 360. Looks like XLSP will be the system that expedites the version release.

The catch is that Microsoft must approve the game maker to use XLSP. We imagine it's kind of like the film Chasing Liberty, where the President of the US gives his over-protected daughter extra freedom to travel Europe with an undercover secret service agent constantly keeping watch. In this adaptation, Microsoft is played by the reliable Stark Sands, Mark Rein is captured brilliantly by the venerable and lovable Mandy Moore and XLSP is portrayed by the hunky Matthew Goode ... what? It was a good film, don't look at us like that!

[Via X3F]

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Epic's Mark Rein pleased with Blu-ray's 'legroom'

Ludwig Kietzmann — 2007-08-15T16:56:00+00:00

Filed under: PC, Sony PlayStation 3, Microsoft Xbox 360, First Person Shooters

Much like a psychotic chainsaw killer, Epic vice president Mark Rein has expressed satisfaction with being given more room to store all those legs. While talking up first-person fragger Unreal Tournament 3 at the Edinburgh Interactive Festival, Rein praised the PlayStation 3 disc format's large storage capacity, noting that "we may have fewer maps on the 360 version...Blu-ray has definitely given us a lot of legroom."

Of course, as Xbox 360 developers are wont to do, Rein applied some damage control on the Epic Games forums, explaining how disappointed he was that "folks on the internet treat any positive thing we say about one platform as some sort of critique of another platform." While ruling out the possibility of two DVDs for the eventual Xbox 360 version of Unreal Tournament 3, Rein suggested that online downloads and hard drives could sort out glaring content deficiencies between platforms.

And before you ask about mod support for Microsoft's console: "We just don't have all the answers today and it isn't our chief priority at this very moment because we already have our hands completely full shipping UT3 on PC and PS3 as well as shipping Gears of War on PC."

[Thanks, Anonymous]

Read -- "EIF: Rein's a Blu-ray fan" (GamesIndustry.Biz)
Read -- Is the 360 version limited?

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Joystiq interviews Unreal Tournament 3's Mark Rein

Jem Alexander — 2007-08-03T08:00:00+00:00

Filed under: PC, Sony PlayStation 3, First Person Shooters, Interviews

Mark Rein, Vice President of Epic, was kind enough to sit down and chat with us at the Develop Conference in Brighton. During this fairly lengthy talk we discuss, among other things, UT3's performance on the PS3 the Unreal Engine's development and how that relates to other licensees. Find the full interview after the break.

How long will it be before a fully optimised PS3 version of Unreal Engine 3 is released to developers?

It's constantly being released to developers. How it works is, when you license Unreal Engine 3 you get access to our development server where we do all of our source control. So you can see everything that we put into this server. It's completely transparent to licensees.

What we do then is, and I'm guessing here as I'm not directly involved with this, but about once a month we'll put a build through quality assurance testing. This is then an approved build, or a "blessed" build as we call them. We advise our licensees that they might find a specific bug fix on our development server, but if you want something that's gone through testing you have to wait and use a "blessed" build.

Gallery: Unreal Tournament III

How long before you no longer need Sony's help optimising the engine for the PS3?

Sony's helping everyone optimise their code. The one guy that came to us from Sony worked on our stuff for a couple of days then went to work at another publisher's stuff for a few days. Then another. That's the thing, console platform holders generally provide lots of assistance to lots of developers. They have whole teams of programmers and specialists who go around and help everybody do these kinds of things. This isn't abnormal.

But Unreal Engine in particular has had some trouble recently from Silicon Knights saying that they received incomplete versions of the code.

I can't comment about any of that, but I can tell you how we're doing with our PS3 development of Unreal Tournament 3. We've got it running quite well now on the system. We showed it at E3 last week, did you get a chance to play it?

I didn't go to E3..

Oh, that's too bad. It runs beautifully. Performance is good. It's a good sign, but we're certainly not done optimising it. We always stated that a year after the console launched we'd ship a game. That's what we did for the Xbox 360, we shipped Gears of War. The point at which we release it is the point at which it passes the "this kicks ass" bar, if you will. It will be no different with PS3. A year after the platform ships, we'll have released Unreal Tournament 3 and it will have crossed the "this kicks ass" bar and all of our licensees can benefit from that.

If people are trying to ship their games ahead of us then yeah, they'll have to do some of those optimisation steps on their own, or wait for us. That's just the way it works. It's always worked that way. It took us a year after Xbox 360 and here we are less than a year after PlayStation 3 and I'd say that today Unreal Tournament 3 runs better on PS3 than Gears did on Xbox 360 at the same point in its development. So, that bodes well for how well the engine will run on PS3 as we're already ahead of where I thought we'd be in terms of optimisations.

And how well will it run? Any word on a resolution or framerate?

You'll have to ask the people who came and played it at E3. IGN gave it runner up for "best PlayStation 3 shooter" and they played it, so they must have thought it was pretty darn good.

But no-one has been able to pin down an exact resolution or frame rate from you guys.

720p resolution, which is what we planned to do, and it was running at least 30fps when I last saw it.

Are you planning anything for PlayStation Home?

Oh yeah. We'll definitely do an environment in Home, no question. We'll let you go into Home and enter the game, like Phil Harrison showed at E3.

Okay. On to mods, which will play a big part in the PlayStation 3 version. Will the PS3 support total conversion mods?

Yes. Anything you can put in a level. "Level" is a little deceiving now because, with the streaming system that we have, a level isn't just one map anymore. But anything you can put in there, which includes maps, models, Unreal Kismet scripts, Unreal Script, textures, shaders, matinee instructions. Anything that we can do, you can do.

Will the editor be available for download for people who buy the PS3 version, so that they don't have to buy both versions if they want to create content?

I doubt it. The editor is one of the selling points of the PC version. PS3 owners will need to buy the PC version as well, if they want to make mods. Not if they want to play mods. But, they would anyway because that's where the content is. Are we going to release the whole game for free? You need it for the content. Well, you don't need it if you're going to make 100% new content, but no mod does that.

You need access to our scripts, access to our library. Most people will still use our static meshes and our textures to populate their map. They're going to grab our trees, not make their own. Just a blank editor wouldn't be a good start for making a mod.

Do you not see that as a bit harsh? You're asking PS3 users who want to create content for the PS3 to buy two versions of the game.

Well, they have to make it on a PC anyway. How else are they going to do it?

Will you not lose out on PS3 sales, or 360 sales in the long run, because of that?

No, I don't think so. It just makes sense. People who create content have to buy a modelling package if they want to create models. They have to buy a Photoshop equivilent if they want to make textures. They have to buy audio recording software if they want to edit audio. Or video editing software if they want to edit video on a PC.

But if you want to edit a video on a PC and then play it on a PS3, you simply have to convert it. You don't have to buy the software again for the PS3. If you can see where I'm coming from.

Not really. It's not like our game is $500. Our game is not the cost of 3D Studio Max or Photoshop.

Are mods going to be gimped on the 360 due to the closed nature of Xbox Live?

We have no idea what we're going to do yet on 360.

So there may not even be mods on the 360?

We don't know. We're talking to Microsoft and still trying to figure that out. Worst case scenario would be Epic bringing popular mods onto the 360 and putting them through the certification process. Because that's the way it works today. Or selling them in Marketplace, or convincing Microsoft to let us give some away for free. That's the worst case scenario. Hopefully it will be better than that, but we know nothing yet about how that's going to work and that's why we're totally concentrating on the PS3 right now, in terms of consoles.

Will mods on the PS3 be checked or monitored?

No. It's user created content. We don't check mods today on PC, why would we check them in the future? I mean, we check them out if we hear "here's this awesome mod" or they are entered in our contest. We had a big million dollar nVidia "Make something Unreal" mod contest so all those mods were checked because they were submitted to the contest. Somebody had to judge them and decide which ones the rest of the judges should check out and things of that nature. But there's no way to check every single mod that's placed out on the internet.

People have suggested that they would like to see some sort of Web 2.0 mod ranking system. Especially for the PS3, because it's console based so you won't have to scour the internet looking for them, they'll all be in one place, presumably.

Yeah, there's no question. We'll have to work with some partners to help identify what the best mods are. That's part of the reason we will do another contest. Because it comes to light through the contest that there are some mods that you really need to play because it won this phase or came second or third. There are lots sites out there where you can put up your own mod and have it ranked. The PlayStation 3 has a web browser so it's easy to do that.

But what about a LittleBigPlanet style system so that people can create levels, put it up, have others download it and rank it. All within the game itself. Would that be possible?

I have no idea. It's a good idea. I like it. I don't know if we would be able to get around to it before we ship.

Would it be possible to implement something like that after release as a patch or upgrade?

Oh, sure. Unreal Tournament is one of the most supported games in the history of supported games. We've demonstrated that over and over again and we've maintained some versions for well over a year. We don't have an exact plan with what we're going to do after we've shipped the game, but history shows that we will do stuff with it. We do mods and bonus packs and add functionality and we listen to the fans to try to do what makes the most sense.

But that is a good idea. We will definitely have that for the contest, so as long as a mod is submitted to the contest there will be a site with user votes regarding what's good and what's not good. We had that for the last contest three years ago. We didn't use them in the judging, but they were available for ranking.

So how long do you think it will be after Unreal Tournament 3 ships that we will start seeing Halo mods for the PS3?

Halo mods?

Master Chief on the PS3, just because.

[Laughs] Well technically that's prohibited by our EULA. Technically you're supposed to have permission for any IP that's not your own. I imagine we will have a way to turn off IP infringers, because that's bad. Microsoft might come after us, even though it's not our doing. However, we had a Star Wars entry in our last mod contest and we told them "you need permission from Lucasarts to do this."

Well Lucasarts gave them permission. What they said was that any money that was won should be donated to charity, but if they win computers, which were big parts of the prizes, they were allowed to keep them. We thought that was fantastic. I was very impressed. So, you never know. Maybe Microsoft will do the same thing. It's not our decision

What about if a mod is made for satire or parody? You know, the loopholes.

We're not the content police any more than Youtube can do that. I'm sure that if we get objectionable content then we'll do our best to take it down, if we can. To be honest, though, we've never had problems with that. Of the 1800 entries submitted to the last contest I don't think we had any IP issues. There's certainly the idea of paying homage to something you love and fans want to do that sort of thing, but I don't recall it being an issue. I don't recall having it being an issue with pornographic content either. That's not to say it doesn't happen, but I don't remember seeing that being a problem in the past.

I think the guys who are serious about making the mods want to eventually have careers in the industry. They want to show that they can make retail quality content, so doing silly things like that is not going to help them.

Is there anything concrete on PS3 to PC cross-play?

Nothing concrete. We're looking into it. I think we'd like to have it, but there are a couple of problems. We were talking about supporting and doing updates and adding the functionality earlier, right? Well, on the PC, we can come up with an idea on Monday and release it on Monday night. Assuming we code it in time. On the console, you don't have that luxury. They want to put everything through certification, so if we want to make a change to add new functionality or fix a bug then we have to go through the process. The process is complicated enough and difficult enough so that it's not something you want to go through every three days.

So you want to stack up all your fixes, updates and add ons and release them a couple of times a year. Not a couple of times a month. So the problem is, if we decide to do something that changed compatability then it would be very difficult for us to co-ordinate the two updates to happen at the same time. That's one potential concern. There are other concerns as well. We want to make the best experience for our audience. You used the word "gimped" earlier, right? We don't want our PC guys to think we gimped UT3 and made it slower because it's harder to play it on a controller when the game is moving at super lightning speed.

Likewise, we don't want our PS3 users to think they're getting a twitchy mouse and keyboard game because we didn't want to slow down the PC version. Consequently, the game runs at slightly different rates. Playing the game on the controller is a little different from playing on a keyboard and mouse. So, if we allow cross platform play then what do we do? Speed it up on PS3 or slow it down on PC? I'm not talking framerate, but rather the movement speed of characters and vehicles and turning responses. There are some things you can do easily with the buttons on the controller that you can't do with keyboard and mouse. So how do we handicap it to make it fair?

So we don't know. We'll probably try it. Technically, today it works. But that's in the lab where we can change it every three minutes. But the other question is, do the users really want it? I'm not so sure. I haven't seen any great demand for it. There's no question that users do not want us to - your word- "gimp" the game to have that feature. The real benefit of the cross platform strategy is the mods. There is huge benefit there. The other benefit is being able to use your PC as a server. That's another huge benefit and we're definitely having that.

Using a PC as a server for PS3 games?

Yes. Absolutely. There's no question that that's something that people want and which we want. We want to be able to tell our publisher "hey, we want you to go out and host a hundred servers for the PS3" so that there are loads of high bandwidth dedicated servers on day one. So they'll go to a hosting service which has racks and racks of Linux boxes and they'll host the servers and they'll click the box which says "advertise to PS3." For sure, that's a benefit. People also ask us whether we'll support keyboard and mouse on PS3.

I was just about to ask that very question.

We might already, I don't know. Actually, I've never asked our engineers the question. [Laughs] There's no reason why we couldn't, except for the problems I mentioned earlier. Is that fair to the people who won't be playing with keyboard and mouse?

What about some sort of manual calibration in the options menu which allows you to set the game up for either a controller or keyboard and mouse?

I don't know. The other problem is, you have to look at what options are worth delaying the game for. We want to ship the game as soon before Christmas as possible. So an option like that isn't very high on our list of priorities. I'd be interested to see if people really wanted it or not.

Do you see yourselves releasing a lot of updates like that? Not necessarily gameplay updates, but options and expanded interface functionality?

We have in the past. I wouldn't say "a lot", but we've definitely added options to the game in the past. It wouldn't be unusual for us.

What's the maximum number of people that can play together at once?

I don't think we've actually decided that yet. I'd be careful not to say a number.

What about a safe number? A minimum.

Oh, safe? Fifteen. Sixteen. I think we're aiming for twenty. I play it all the time with eight bots and it's great, so I don't see any reason why we couldn't do a lot more than that.

Will that change with dedicated PC servers?

We'll have separate setting for dedicated servers. Different maximums. There's no question that with dedicated servers you can support more people. The biggest thing people don't realise is that most people use cable or DSL modems and have very throttled outgoing bandwidth. Outgoing bandwidth is the biggest limiter. Many times when you play an online game and someone is hosting it out of their home, people complain that they're really lagged because their outgoing bandwidth is maxed out.

You see people on UT2004 setting up huge 32 person servers hosted out of their home, that won't work very well. Unless you have a very good internet connection, which varies wildly. Nothing to do with us, we don't own the internet. [Laughs] That's why we're putting so much stock in dedicated PC servers for PS3 games. Not just PC, but Mac and Linux as well.

Will the release date be simultaneous for Europe and America?

Yeah. No reason to be any different. We're shooting for November, but we don't have a specific date yet.

Do you have anything to say about rumours that a game set in the Gears of War universe could be coming to PS3?

That's not going to happen, because Microsoft own the license to that series.

Will the extra content in Gears of War for the PC be ported over to the 360 at any point?

Probably not. The problem there is that the PC version was developed using a different version of Unreal Engine 3. A much later iteration, simply because it came later. The engine is constantly being improved, as I said. So the content just isn't compatible.

Any plans for games post-UT3?

Once we've finished supporting Unreal Tournament 3 we'll start working on something else. What that will be, we don't know yet.

Thanks very much for your time.

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Mod restrictions holding back UT3 360

Ross Miller — 2007-08-01T12:25:00+00:00

Filed under: PC, Microsoft Xbox 360, First Person Shooters

Sony's timed exclusive with Unreal Tournament 3 looks to have happened in part thanks to Microsoft. According to Epic Games' Mark Rein (via CVG), unresolved issues with downloadable user mods on the Xbox 360 led the developer to delay the shooter until "some time after the new year." Rein also confirmed this news to Joystiq in an interview to be published tomorrow.

Because of the closed nature of the Xbox Live network, setting up a system for PC users to share mods with Xbox 360 users would be challenging, especially since there is no cross-platform connectivity via Microsoft's Games for Windows Live. "And Microsoft's got a very busy Christmas schedule... We just couldn't get enough attention from them to solve that problem," he told MCV.

"Worst case scenario would be Epic bringing popular mods onto the 360 and putting them through the certification process," Rein told us. "Because that's the way it works today. Or selling them in Marketplace, or convincing Microsoft to let us give some away for free," he said.

"That's the worst case scenario. Hopefully it will be better than that, but we know nothing yet about how that's going to work and that's why we're totally concentrating on the PS3 right now, in terms of consoles," he said.

Gallery: Unreal Tournament III

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Gears of War PC with 20% more

Alexander Sliwinski — 2007-07-27T13:15:00+00:00

Filed under: PC, Action

More Marcus, more Dom, more Brumak! Mark Rein, VP of Epic, says to EuroGamer that the PC version of mega-hit Gears of War adds "about 20 percent extra." Rein also reaffirmed that the extra PC content, like the Brumak fight, will not be making it onto the Xbox 360 due to changes in the "codebase." OK, who wants to take the first crack at: "Even Epic can't get their own engine to do what they want? Har, har."

Gears of War on PC will have added level content, multiplayer maps, game modes and a game editor. Now, where to find the extra money for upgrading your PC to run the game smoothly? On the bright side, you could always just play with your Gears of War dolls, which we're sure will be a lot cheaper than upgrading a PC. Gears of War on PC is expected this fall.

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Unreal Tournament 3 not using Games for Windows Live

Ross Miller — 2007-07-20T20:45:00+00:00

Filed under: PC, Sony PlayStation 3, Microsoft Xbox 360, First Person Shooters, Online, Competitive Gaming

Xbox 360 users who want to shoot up their PC counterparts in Unreal Tournament 3 are out of luck -- Epic vice president Mark Rein has confirmed on the developer's forums that the first-person shooter will not use Games For Windows Live and will therefore not feature cross-platform play between Microsoft's console and the PC.

Rein said that they have not decided about cross-platform play between PC and the PlayStation 3. "We're not 100% sure that users want that feature but if we get time we'll play around with it and see how it works," he said. Sony's console will have the ability to share PC mods, so the the logistics of PC vs. PS3 play shouldn't be too hard.

No release date has been given but Unreal Tournament 3 has been confirmed as a timed exclusive for the PS3.

Gallery: Unreal Tournament III

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Gears of War, UT3 coming to Macs

Scott Jon Siegel — 2007-07-17T11:55:00+00:00

Filed under: Mac, PC, Microsoft Xbox 360, Action, First Person Shooters

At this rate, it's becoming difficult not to play Cliffy B's roadie-running extravaganza. During an interview with Game Head's Geoff Keighley, Epic VP Mark Rein revealed that Gears of War is in development for Mac OS X, along with Unreal Tournament 3. This news follows Epic's E3 announcement that Gears is in development for PC, with additional features not seen in the Xbox 360 version.

No development details or release dates were mentioned. Given the casual nature of this announcement, however, one can assume that both Gears and UT3 will be ported from the PC to OS X using Cider, rather than being developed natively. No love for PowerPC users; though it might be time to consider that Intel-based Apple you've been eyeing ...

[Update: It appears these are coming to the Mac natively, not through the magic of Cider, according to this comment from MacSoft's Ryan Gordon: "And no, neither game is using Cider." Impressive. Thanks for the link, David!]

[Via X3F]

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Gears of War gets golf mode

Justin McElroy — 2007-05-12T09:45:00+00:00

Filed under: Hacks, Microsoft Xbox 360, Action

Perhaps tired of complaints that all of the Gears of War gametypes are too similar, Epic has struck back with a new one that's just about as different as different gets: Golf. The only problem? You'll probably never get to play it.

Games Radar has the full story from Mark Rein in an upcoming issue of Edge magazine. Eager to prove to a Korean publisher that Unreal Engine 3 is about more than shooting people until they die from it, the team at Epic spent a day transforming Gears into golfing game that used the game's grenade mechanics to aim and swing and featured Marcus Fenix as the man behind the clubs. One of the levels from Gears even got it's landscape reworked to make it more of a course. It all sounds intriguing, too bad we'll never see it.

"Cinderella story. Outta nowhere. A former ~~greenskeeper~~ space marine, now, about to become the Masters champion. It looks like a mirac... It's in the hole! It's in the hole! It's in the hole!"

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New Gears gametype 'Annex' previewed, still no date

Justin McElroy — 2007-04-09T13:25:00+00:00

Filed under: Microsoft Xbox 360, Action, Online

If you already suspected that "Annex," the new Gears of War gametype, was a highfalutin name for King of the Hill, this 1UP preview and video will do very little to change your mind. But, if said preview is any indication, it could become "the definitive way to play Gears online," so who really cares what it's called? When they're not heaping on the praise for Annex, 1UP also discloses some tweaks coming with this update (like increased fire for the Lancer) and in the future (four new maps with titles like "Subway" and "Bullet Marsh").

The big question now is exactly when the free update will be available to us commoners. The 1UP piece says we can expect it this week, a hope echoed by Epic's Mark Rein yesterday. But plans have been changed before, if memory serves.

[Update: It's coming today. Seriously!]

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Microsoft forcing fees? Marketplace Phil. 101 with Epic and Microsoft

Alexander Sliwinski — 2007-04-09T10:34:00+00:00

Filed under: PC, Microsoft Xbox 360, Action, Adventure, Business

In the most recent podcast of the 1UP Yours show Tim Sweeney and Mark Rein from Epic Games (Gears of War, Unreal Tournament) sat down and talked about Xbox Live Marketplace and a host of other topics. But the quote that stuck in people's heads was when Tim Sweeney implied Epic would like to give Gears of War maps away for free on Xbox Marketplace (like they did the original maps), but Microsoft won't let them.

Sweeney said, "We already released two [maps] and we have four more maps that we've built. We've been wanting to give them away for a long time but actually Microsoft has been pushing back on us for that. They're trying to build this business model around selling additional content for games and that's a valid idea, but definitely we would like to release more stuff for free, and we haven't been able to do so -- yet. Which is unfortunate, there's a lot of good business reasons for releasing free content for a game."

This naturally sparked some heavy debate on the Evil Avatar forums. Joystiq spoke with Mark Rein over the weekend and he laughed at how out of context the conversation was taken. He asked people to listen to the podcast before they weighed in. He says there are simple business philosophies separating Epic and Microsoft.

After our conversation, Rein posted a statement on the Evil Avatar forum, sending a copy to Joystiq, which said in part, "Quite frankly Xbox Live Marketplace isn't our store. It's Microsoft's store. Like any retailer they have the right to figure out what goes on the shelves of their store and what price they sell it at. They spend the money to operate the store and deliver the content. They've also spent billions of dollars to create and build Xbox and subsidize it's the price so you can afford it and we can make games for it. As our publisher, they also invested tens of millions of dollars marketing Gears of War, and have done an awesome job for us, so they have a right to a good return on that investment."

Rein says both Epic and Microsoft want to make money, they just have different philosophies on how to do it. Epic believes in giving content away for free, building the user base of their product by adding value after initial purchase. A model they've learned extremely well from being involved in the PC market for years. Microsoft believes in charging up front, and in the case of Xbox Marketplace, they have a store to run and infrastructure to pay for -- this doesn't mean the GoW maps won't be given away for free later like the Halo 2 maps. Rein believes it's their job to advocate for their product to maximize users and profits. It's Microsoft's job to maximize their profits on Xbox Marketplace so that both companies benefit. Rein understands Microsoft has a store to run on their console, makes sure to say they "aren't evil" and can't fault them for trying to make money -- he likes money too.

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CliffyB will executive produce Gears of War film

Ross Miller — 2007-03-22T19:00:00+00:00

Filed under: Microsoft Xbox 360, First Person Shooters, Business

Gears of War creator CliffyB will serve as an executive producer to the film adaptation, according to Mark Rein, Vice President of Epic Games. Speaking to Game Invasion at Midway's Gamer Day, Rein also explained that it was Jay Wilbur, the other Epic Game VP, who worked with Creative Artists Agency to negotiate the deal.

Having the creator of the franchise in such a prominent position is sure to satiate purists to the game, but so far we have seen only minimal plot that could not be stretched to a feature length. And CliffyB's production role may not give him too much influence, for better or worse -- after serving as executive producer for the latest film adaptation of his work, Frank Miller has decided to serve as director on his roles from now on.

No director has been announced, but the treatment was done by Stuart Beattie, scribe of Collateral, which bodes well. New Line won the rights to create the film, but we're still hesitant to call it will still come to fruition or fall through the cracks like Halo did.

[Thanks, Frank]

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Mark Rein apologizes for Epic's lawyers attacking artist

Alexander Sliwinski — 2007-03-11T13:00:00+00:00

Filed under: Culture, Microsoft Xbox 360, Action, Adventure, Business

While Mark Rein was away, the lawyers did play. During last week's GDC a cease and desist order was sent to Emilio Lopez over a very well done one-time piece of Gears of War art. Lopez had created the Munny doll for his cousin. The lawyers requested all Gears of War trademarks be removed -- even though the assets used to create the doll were taken from a fansite pack Epic released. Epic's VP Mark Rein apparently got back to the office after hearing about this and typed out a statement of apology and clarification.

Rein says on the Epic website, "Ugh. Our lawyers are trying to do their job and protect our trademarks but I guess they didn't realize this wasn't a commercial project and they fired off a standard form letter ... What we need to do is come up with some sort of permission letter for things like these so that we're properly protecting our future commercial rights but not stopping people from doing cool fan art like this. On behalf of Epic I apologize to Emilio and anyone who was offended by this."

[Thanks Frost]

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Mark Rein: Gears of War 'eventually' on PC

Ludwig Kietzmann — 2007-02-14T20:00:00+00:00

Filed under: PC, Microsoft Xbox 360, Action

It seems that Epic's Mark Rein is finally being affected by the unrelenting repetition of being asked about a PC version of Gears of War every time he agrees to be interviewed. Having given up on traditional non-denials, an interview with Team Xbox has Mr. Rein taking one step forward and admitting that the testosterone epic will "eventually" be ported to PC.

"Yeah, eventually...I don't think that's any great secret that we would like to do it on PC, but for now it's a 360 game. Eventually we'll get around to a PC version. I just don't know when." Mark explains that the "when" will be largely dependent on how long it takes for the market to have enough PCs capable of playing the reconfigured game and thus be economically viable. However, with Unreal Tournament 3 scheduled for release this year, aren't we at that point already?

Perhaps we should stick to our current strategy -- ask Mark about Gears of War on PC until he screams in agony and orders a team to just port the game already.

[Thanks, Jonah]

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Oblivion: Downgraded for PS3, not happening on Wii [update 1]

Jared Rea — 2007-02-10T11:30:00+00:00

Filed under: Sony PlayStation 3, Nintendo Wii, Microsoft Xbox 360, Adventure, RPGs, Business

When we learned that the PS3 version of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion would not feature the majority of downloadable content found on the Xbox 360 and PC versions of the game, it was a blow to fans of horse armor everywhere. An episode of The 1UP Show (02/02) provides the follow-up hook as 1UP relays a juicy bit of info from Bethesda. As it turns out, it may be due to a memory limitation with the Playstation 3 itself.

1UP says that Bethesda simply could not find a way to load every piece of downloadable content without affecting the performance of the game. Considering that the Xbox 360 can pull off this feat without a hitch, that seems quite odd. Bethesda will still be looking into getting that content available for PS3 users, as addressed by their VP of Marketing, Peter Hines, who also comments on the "rumors" regarding the memory issue in an IGN interview.

As for the PS3 version of Oblivion trumping the 360 in the visuals department, it just so happens that the new shader techniques applied to the PS3 will also be worked into the 360 version of the game. And thus, they are equals once more. Unless you want some horse armor. In which case, you're boned.

Finally, Shacknews sat down with Pete Hines and questioned their plans beyond the PC, PS3 and Xbox 360. When it comes to waggling your remote in Oblivion, "It's not really going to run on a Wii for example, but if it could we would put it there. Our philosophy is to make a game and make it available to as many people as possible."

Read - The 1UP Show, Oblivion Expansion Preview (9:40)
Read - IGN Interview with Pete Hines
Read - Shacknews, Interview with Pete Hines

[Update - We swapped out the Mark Rein quote with the more recent IGN interview to pull the feedback away from gritty, armchair analysis of tech specs and back into the content involved. Cleaned up some wording to not sound so definitive on a complex and unresolved issue. Thanks!]
[Thanks, Stephen!]

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